FinPro Member Update November 2020 ( Edition 2 )

November 20, 2020

Full copy of the Member Update available here

 

FinPro Member Update November 2020 (Edition 2)

President’s Message

Good afternoon,

Gab here – in the absence of our President Bradley who is on day 4 of a 7-day Councillor Induction Program.

Hoping that your week has gone well and that you are managing to take some time out of your busy scheduled to reconnect with family and friends.

A big thank-you to everyone who is involved in the FinPro Local Government Act Implementation Working Party.  Your contributions are really valued and appreciated by the sector, especially given the year we have all had and the amount of other work that is required of you all.

Please remember to email me if you have any ideas for future professional development, or have any queries that we could help with.  When we all help each other, the workload reduces and we become more connected as a group.

Enjoy your weekend,

Cheers, Gab

Gabrielle Gordon – Executive Officer, FinPro

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Membership News

With Council’s updating and renewing their membership for the coming year, we are very pleased and appreciative of the 71 Councils and 3 libraries that have renewed their membership for 2020/21.

We also welcome the following new members to FinPro:

  • Casey Macfarlane, Business Improvement Specialist at Mornington Peninsula Shire
  • Angela Wu, Assistance Accountant at Mornington Peninsula Shire
  • Amanda Burgess, CFO at Moreland City Council
  • Shankar Ganesh, Senior Project Portfolio Accountant at Port Phillip City Council
  • Spyros Karamesinis, Management Accountant at Port Phillip City Council
  • Carly Bolitho, Financial Planning Analyst at Whitehorse City Council
  • Dave Power, Financial Planning and Analysis Accountant at Whitehorse City Council

We are appreciative too of the organisations who have partnered with us this year as part of our Corporate Partnership Program.

This week we welcome Votar Partners as our Corporate Partner.  Thank-you for your support.

If you have any news to share with the FinPro membership please forward this to Gab.

Membership Renewal information available here

Corporate Partnership information available here

FinPro Technical Committee News / Updates

Local Government Act Implementation

The FinPro Local Government Act 2020 Working Group is meeting for the third time today.

The Working Group has been working closely with LGV, to best establish how the Working Group can assist LGV in guidance and more specifically items such as:

  • Budget Document – Hannah White from Hepburn is the project lead for this working group.
  • Long Term Financial Plan – Malcolm Lewis is the project lead for this working group.
  • Rating and Revenue Plan – John Brockway from Surf Coast Shire is the project lead for this working group.

The next meeting of the group is on Friday 27 November 2020.

All of the work the group are undertaking will be considered within the context of the Integrated Strategic Planning & Reporting Framework view, the new Act requirements and the recently gazetted regulations which came into operation on the 24 October 2020.

A reminder to go to https://engage.vic.gov.au/local-government-act-2020  for all LG Act information.

 

Council elections 2020

As Councils are currently running Councillor Induction Programs within their own organisations, we thought it would be interesting to share a few fun facts about this year’s Elections state-wide.

76 of Victoria’s 79 Councils went to election in October.  The 3 Councils that didn’t go to election were south Gippsland, Casey and Whittlesea.  All currently have Administrators in place.

Fun facts:

  • 183 incumbent Councillors chose not to re-contest
  • 17 Mayors chose not to recontest whilst another 7 were defeated
  • 431 incumbent Councillors contested with 314 being re-elected.
  • Highest ever average turnout for local council elections in Victoria – 81.4%
  • Lowest average level of informality since 2008 – 4.7%
  • Highest number of voters enrolled for an electoral event in Victoria – 4.29 million
  • Highest number of candidates in an electoral event in Victoria – 2,187
  • Highest number of simultaneous elections – 298
  • Highest number of website visitors for local council elections – 1.2 million (88% increase on 2016)
  • Highest number of phone calls – 288,016 (109% increase on 2016)
  • Highest number of emails – 13,434 (360% increase on 2016)
  • Highest number of replacement ballot packs mailed – 87,781 (compared to 43,849 in 2016)

The source of some of the above data from the recent paper prepared by Spence Consulting.

 

Payment Times Reporting Scheme (the PTRS)

A number of members will have been contacted already about the Payment Times Reporting Scheme. Looks like this will be another report that Council’s > $100M in turnover will need to produce twice a year. This will be in relation to payments to small businesses (annual turnover under $10M). The tool to report is not being released until December and the reporting requirements start in January so there will be more work required on this over the next couple of months.

More details here: https://www.industry.gov.au/regulations-and-standards/payment-times-reporting-scheme

If any other Councils have done more work on, or have more to share, please contact [email protected] or Gab at FinPro – and we can share this via the member updates.

A snip of the “getting started” screen for Bendigo is included below, which has some of the same information:

 

FinPro Professional development

Upcoming Events

FinPro AGM – this event was to be held at the end of November, however given that the current rules provide for up to 5 months for organisations to hold their AGM (due to COVID), the FinPro Executive have decided to delay the AGM until February 2020 in the hope that we will be able to provide at least a hybrid ‘live’ and ‘virtual’ event at that time.  This event may be held by Region, depending on the restrictions at the time.

Budget Preparation for 2021/22 – As many Councils are already preparing for their upcoming Budgets, the FinPro Executive are putting together a 1-hour webinar for early December 2020.  This webinar will provide a range of examples of how councils are approaching this budget cycle, what they see as particularly important and considerations that are taking into account.

FinPro Leadership Program 2021 – Our next Leadership Program will be held from 16 – 19 May 2021.  Proudly supported by Vision Super, this program will offer the opportunity for up to 12 Emerging Leaders from within the FinPro Membership to take part in a 3-day residential program, onsite at Country Place Kalorama.  We encourage all our members to consider applying for this program, or encouraging someone within their Council who they believe would be suitable to apply.  Applications will open in February 2021.

Past Events

Copies of past recordings and presentations are available on our website.

Information included:

  • FinPro Mini-Conference 2020 (21 and 22 October 2020)
  • Councillor onboarding (1 October 2020)

We will also be running a Budget session in early December and have decided to defer our AGM to February, in the hope that we will be actually able to hold some kind on ‘in person’ event, even if it is across a number of regional locations.

Job Vacancies

FinPro is happy to place advertisements on our website for any finance related positions our members councils are advertising.  Please send the following details through to Gab

  • Job Title
  • Organisation
  • Contract person for further information
  • Link to website
  • Closing Date

We thank our 2020 Corporate Partners

  • Commonwealth Bank
  • CT Management
  • MAGIQ Software
  • LG Solutions
  • VOTAR Partners

 

Corporate Partnership is available to all businesses and is an opportunity to support FinPro, our members and the sector as we journey through COVID and are unable to provide face-to-face Professional Development and live sponsorship opportunities.